Ekaterina Shashlova: The Imaginary Marxism of Alexandre Kojève and the Death Struggle of Soviet Philosophers

Invitation pdf

Abstract

This talk explores Kojève’s self-presentation in the manuscript «Sophia. I. Philosophie et phénoménologie» (1940–1941), which was first made publicly available in French in 2025. This text presents a treatise on how the development of Spirit is embodied in the figure of Stalin. This manuscript has prompted a renewed wave of discussions concerning Kojève’s political views, particularly his justifications of Stalinist repressions. Kojève describes his «phenomenological autobiography» as grounded in Marxism–Leninism–Stalinism. He presents himself as a philosopher who believed his work «Sophia» could pass Soviet censorship and allow him to avoid persecution. This remark, made by Kojève, complements his other texts that address the repression of philosophers and writers in the USSR. The talk argues that this optimism is contradicted both by the content of «Sophia» and by Kojève’s philosophical trajectory. The talk examines Kojève’s reliance on Russian philosophers who later became victims of repression, including Gustav Shpet, Aleksei Losev, and Lev Karsavin. It shows that, despite relying on their works, Kojève remained silent about their fate and did not engage in debates on repression in the USSR. Kojève continued to describe a phenomenological Marxism that could exist only outside the USSR.

Ekaterina Shashlova is currently working on her dissertation «Alexandre Kojève's Political Ontology and the Development of the Theory of Recognition and Misrecognition in Contemporary French Philosophy» at the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University. She is also a researcher at the Masaryk Institute and the archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences as part of the MyGRACE project, «Migration and Us: Mobility, Refugees, and Borders from the Perspective of the Humanities».